After some summer holiday reading (Guy Claxton's "What's the Point of School" and "Key Competencies for the Future" by Hipkins, Bolstad, Boyd & McDowall) I've been all revved up and revived in my attempts to focus on a much broader range of outcomes - not only the academic, core curriculum stuff, but also Harvard's dispositions of thinking, the NZ curriculum's key competencies, a design thinking mindset, Claxton's 'Magnificent 8', as well as knowledge skills, digital literacy, and visual literacy. There are many, many overlaps between all of the above, and they share very similar base concepts - ones which are integral to living well in this complex, knowledge-ridden world.
I've written in a post a few weeks back what I thought were the ingredients needed for designing good learning. It turns out it's easy enough to sit back and blog about it - it's much more complex in practise to actually do it. Regardless - I'm giving it a nudge, and today in class we began exploring how to "cook up" good learning for ourselves.
It's the start of our Term 1 in New Zealand, so we really wanted to kick-off with a strong message about learning. That it takes effort and challenge, that it's an active process, that it stems from curiosity, that it is sometimes collaborative and sometimes solitary, that it is sometimes online and sometimes offline. With an eye on curriculum coverage (instructional writing and author purpose) we decided to prompt the students into writing a recipe - "How to Cook Up Good Learning".
We integrated different elements ~
Inquiry - This forms the core of our inquiry this term, how we live well in the world, with ourselves and with others.
A generative topic / interest hook - We showed clips of Chef from the Muppets and afterwards reflected on why it was or wasn't clear. We gave the students a list of instructions which asked them to read all of the 20 instructions below first, then the last point said disregard all of the above except the top two (not one single student read all the instructions first! - good learning for all). We asked - why should instructions be entertaining?
Guided Reading - We read excerpts from Guy Claxton's "What's the Point of School" and other blog posts I borrowed information on the qualities of good learners from. We read through these together in a guided way, the students taking notes on post-it's as they went. These were combined into a whole group brainstorm later where we shared what we had learned, adding our own prior knowledge. We talked about comprehension and what to do when we are unsure of certain vocabulary.
Independent Reading - While the students were't with me they were looking at my Star Wars Cookbook and Jamie Oliver clips and taking notes on the kinds of language being used (a pinch of this, a hint of that, bake X for 20 minutes, prepare X beforehand).
Knowledge Snapper - We presented a 10 minute "Snapper" on the features of instructional wiring. Students listened as we ran through it, although it is now available online for them to check out if they need a refresher.
Writing - Today we took all of the above and began planning out our "learning recipes" on big pieces of paper with post-it notes, scribbling thoughts down in a low-fidelity way - talking with others and getting their feedback. Tomorrow, students begin drafting their recipes, getting feedback early and often as they move through the writing process.
And it's working out pretty well so far! The students seem very keen on it, and love the silliness of "adding a hint of curiosity" and "bake the thoughts in your head overnight at 200 degrees". They are getting the key curriculum content over both reading and writing, learning more about themselves as learners, and practising the dispositions of getting thinking out into the wild, being open to feedback, working with others, and the challenge of working with complex ideas - "working the hard parts".
I'm learning a lot this week about how to blend lots of these elements together - it's not easy, and takes a bit of thinking, but it's absolutely possible to have your cake and eat it too in this teaching gig. To cover what you need to cover, but still really helping grow key competencies and dispositions for these students which will serve them well now and in the future.
I've written in a post a few weeks back what I thought were the ingredients needed for designing good learning. It turns out it's easy enough to sit back and blog about it - it's much more complex in practise to actually do it. Regardless - I'm giving it a nudge, and today in class we began exploring how to "cook up" good learning for ourselves.
It's the start of our Term 1 in New Zealand, so we really wanted to kick-off with a strong message about learning. That it takes effort and challenge, that it's an active process, that it stems from curiosity, that it is sometimes collaborative and sometimes solitary, that it is sometimes online and sometimes offline. With an eye on curriculum coverage (instructional writing and author purpose) we decided to prompt the students into writing a recipe - "How to Cook Up Good Learning".
We integrated different elements ~
Inquiry - This forms the core of our inquiry this term, how we live well in the world, with ourselves and with others.
A generative topic / interest hook - We showed clips of Chef from the Muppets and afterwards reflected on why it was or wasn't clear. We gave the students a list of instructions which asked them to read all of the 20 instructions below first, then the last point said disregard all of the above except the top two (not one single student read all the instructions first! - good learning for all). We asked - why should instructions be entertaining?
Guided Reading - We read excerpts from Guy Claxton's "What's the Point of School" and other blog posts I borrowed information on the qualities of good learners from. We read through these together in a guided way, the students taking notes on post-it's as they went. These were combined into a whole group brainstorm later where we shared what we had learned, adding our own prior knowledge. We talked about comprehension and what to do when we are unsure of certain vocabulary.
Independent Reading - While the students were't with me they were looking at my Star Wars Cookbook and Jamie Oliver clips and taking notes on the kinds of language being used (a pinch of this, a hint of that, bake X for 20 minutes, prepare X beforehand).
Knowledge Snapper - We presented a 10 minute "Snapper" on the features of instructional wiring. Students listened as we ran through it, although it is now available online for them to check out if they need a refresher.
Writing - Today we took all of the above and began planning out our "learning recipes" on big pieces of paper with post-it notes, scribbling thoughts down in a low-fidelity way - talking with others and getting their feedback. Tomorrow, students begin drafting their recipes, getting feedback early and often as they move through the writing process.
And it's working out pretty well so far! The students seem very keen on it, and love the silliness of "adding a hint of curiosity" and "bake the thoughts in your head overnight at 200 degrees". They are getting the key curriculum content over both reading and writing, learning more about themselves as learners, and practising the dispositions of getting thinking out into the wild, being open to feedback, working with others, and the challenge of working with complex ideas - "working the hard parts".
I'm learning a lot this week about how to blend lots of these elements together - it's not easy, and takes a bit of thinking, but it's absolutely possible to have your cake and eat it too in this teaching gig. To cover what you need to cover, but still really helping grow key competencies and dispositions for these students which will serve them well now and in the future.
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